Assistant Professor Alan Zarychta received the American Political Science Association's 2017 Leonard D. White Award for best dissertation in the field of public administration. It was presented at APSA's annual meeting in August.

The following text was included in the press release by the American Political Science Association, found on their website Political Science Now:

"We are delighted to present the 2017 Leonard D. White Award to Dr. Alan Zarychta, Ph.D., for his dissertation, “It Takes More Than a Village: Governance and Public Services in Developing Countries.” In his dissertation, Dr. Zarychta analyzes data from two developing nations – Honduras and India – to understand the causes and consequences of public policy decentralization. Focusing on health centers and maternity care, the manuscript asks why developing nations decentralize public policy, why such moves succeed or fail, and how decentralization might impact citizens’ civic behavior. In answering these questions, Dr. Zarychta creates a valuable piece of interdisciplinary, multimethod research: the literature review knits together important scholarship from political science, public administration, and policy studies, the fieldwork and data collection are impressive, and the analytic framework is robust and well executed. In sum, the dissertation makes important theoretical contributions about the relationship between politics, policy, and administration and nuanced policy recommendations for administrators and policymakers in developing nations. The dissertation was written while Dr. Zarychta was a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Boulder; his dissertation committee was chaired by Dr. Krister Andersson. We congratulate Dr. Zarychta on a job well done."